Local stations share the wealth at regional Emmys; Walt honored

WDAF, Fox 4, walked home with seven nine regional Emmys at the ceremonies in St. Louis Oct. 20, but NBC Action News, KMBC-9 and other local stations also one-upped their cross-state rivals, winning important categories all night long. Also, KCUR's Walt Bodine was inducted into the NATAS region's Gold Circle for 50 years of broadcasting.

Channels changing this November

  Today is the start not just of November but of sweeps, the first big test of the season for Kansas City's four TV news stations. And it comes at a rare time, when all four are going through major upheavals behind the scenes.

  Two stations have a new news director, another lost its news director less than a month ago, and the fourth station is up for sale, with a buyer expected any day now.

  Change backstage usually means change onstage, and we're starting to see that, too.

  KCTV-5

  When Tracy Miller stepped into the newsroom of KCTV for the first time earlier this year, she found an outfit of dedicated reporters working diligently on some low-rent stories.

  Conditioned by their hard-charging former news director Regent Ducas, the Fivers were live and late-breaking with whatever was popping up on the police scanner 15 minutes before air.

  “There were a lot of petty crime stories that I felt we didn't need to have a reporter on,” said Miller, who has brought an upbeat, energetic presence to the newsroom. “I thought we could still do our brand and be more sophisticated about it.”

  Do our brand -- in other words, KCTV-5 naysayers, “Live, Late Breaking, Investigative” isn't going anywhere. But, “live news doesn't have to be about just crime,” said Miller. “Let's say a coach resigned. If it just happened, it's live and late-breaking.”

  Especially on its earlier newscasts, KCTV-5 news shouldn't look like “America's Most Wanted,” said Miller. “I noticed sometimes we'd do mug shot after mug shot. One time it went on for like, five minutes.” She's hired a new executive producer, LaShauna Sewell, from the Fox station in Houston, to help morning news dial back on the sensationalism while staying just as newsy.

  As for investigative, Miller said she held back stories that normally would have run during premiere week in September “to give the guys a chance to do some digging.” She's promising stories that pack a wallop starting tonight.

  And weather? Well, Miller had Katie Horner on for two hours straight the other week, when tornadoes grazed the viewing area, so she's doing that brand, too.

  “I grew up in Oklahoma,” said Miller, “so the tornadoes were like, 'Welcome back to the Midwest!'”

  NBC Action News

  Rick Iler also liked what he saw when he arrived at the KSHB studios seven weeks ago as its news director. Debbie Bush, who left to run a station in Indiana, brought stability to the newsroom as well as a co-anchor for Elizabeth Alex, a news chopper, a sports show on “38 the Spot” and the late-morning “Kansas City Live.”

  “This was really a strong newsroom that did a good job,” said Iler, a 21-year veteran of the news business. “But the energy level has been raised just in the time I was here.”

  That's a positive way of stating a negative. During NBC's heyday in the late 1990s, it seemed KSHB could never convince many “ER” and “Law & Order” viewers to stick around for news. In recent years, as “NBC Action News” improved, the network's ratings tanked. It was deflating.

  Iler, who came from a CBS affiliate in Phoenix, knows that TV is a cyclical business. At some point CBS will start to fade and NBC will be on the rise. To prepare for that day, he's tweaking KSHB's on-air presentation. More reporters walking and talking. More Q-and-A between the anchor desk and the people in the field.

  “When we tell stories, we should have a conversation with our audience,” said Iler.

  And he too is promising less crime coverage -- it's a trend!

  “This is an extremely crime-driven television market,” Iler said. “We get too caught up covering the blotter. We've backed off the crime and I think that's already having an impact on Mark (Clegg) and Elizabeth's energy.”

  Iler also has high hopes for his new wakeup crew (native Kansan Christa Dubill recently joined Jeff Vaughn and Brett Anthony). “Mornings are the big game now and we're going to be players,” he said.

  KMBC-9

  What hasn't changed at KMBC? New ZIP code, new high-definition cameras, new guy in the mornings, and a new sense of urgency, as the station's news director just quit under pressure.

  It's not just the humans that are stressing. “In the middle of a newscast, one of our robotic cameras just decided to go for a walk in the studio,” said general manager C. Wayne Godsey. “But it's the same as any manufacturing business. You move into a new factory and things don't always work the way they should.”

  According to Godsey, KMBC's number one goal this month will be to solve those technical glitches.

  Fox 4

  Viewers may have noticed that Fox 4's new on-screen graphics have a certain familiar look to them. That's because they're modeled on the graphics that Fox News Channel has been using for years, and all the stations owned by Fox are switching to them. Which is ironic in WDAF's case, because Fox is about to sell the station, probably to a private-equity group.

  But orders are orders, and news director Bryan McGruder is a Fox man until told otherwise.

  The big change in November will be on Fox 4's top-rated morning news program, as Sharita Hutton steps in for departed reporter Ken Price. Taking her place on the weekend newscasts this month is Kim Byrnes, who used to be weekend anchor before moving to part-time status.

Hey! Where'd my MSNBC go?

Democrats in Oregon got a rude awakening this week when they discovered that Comcast had yanked MSNBC from their cable systems.  And they're not alone; the home of Keith Olbermann has been vanishing off basic cable grids across the land.

"Please, oh please, tell me that this isn't Comcast turning out the lights on the only cable news channel that even bothers to air one progressive voice," wrote this blogger.

Actually, the story is not quite so dire or sinister (I think). But you're still not going to like it.

Bye bye, "Queer Eye"

Four years and a hundred makeovers later, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" quietly calls it a series with a finale airing at 8 tonight on Bravo.

Garth Brooks to talk, fly 1800 miles, perform ... all in 5 hours

This caught my editor Ward Triplett's eye: Garth Brooks is scheduled to appear on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" next Monday, Nov. 5 — but hold on, he's scheduled to perform the first of nine shows in Kansas City's Sprint Center that same night. Huh?

Winners and losers of the fall season

Shari Elliker and I reviewed some of the shows that have shined, and those that have faded. But we opened with a discussion of outlaw celebrity sites like TMZ and the effect it's had on celebrities who now avoid traditional news media.

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"Nip/Tuck" attempts cutting-edge satire in season 5

(Above: Season 5 preview.)

 

When we last left the good doctors of FX's sexy-squirmy “Nip/Tuck,” they had moved their plastic surgery practice from L.A. to Miami from Miami to L.A. and were waiting for their first customer to walk through those doors.

Right … through those doors!

Those doors. Right there.

(crickets)

OK......

Amazingly, none of these is on Yahoo Buzz

OK, I thought it was weird enough for a PBS "Nature" program about the disappearing North American honeybees to be running the exact same day AND HOUR, in some markets, as a "60 Minutes" segment on CBS about the disappearing North American honeybees. But then to start seeing ads for Jerry Seinfeld's "Bee Movie" AND this very clever HP tie-in ad (above) with the man himself ... well, it's like Albert Einstein once said: "If Jerry Seinfeld returns to NBC, mankind will have six weeks of oxygen left."

To learn what else Einstein didn't say, read my review of "Nature" from Sunday's Star. It's on the jump, as is another video.

DrewTube: Carey rocks as "TPIR" star

He's not just the host of "The Price Is Right," Drew Carey is the star. And in his own understated way, Cleveland's finest is proving to be the replacement for Bob Barker that many of us hoped he would.

'Complete Directory': The set-top book

It's always fun to find the new edition of Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh's Complete Directory to Prime-Time Network and Cable TV Shows crammed into your mailbox. It only happens twice a decade, and it may not happen ever again. The Complete Directory is truly one of the seven wonders of show business. Somehow Brooks and Marsh grew this hefty paperback ($19 at Amazon) from 5,000 shows listed in the 6th edition to 6,500 shows in the 9th edition while adding about half an inch to the spine. In fact, no listing has ever been deleted or edited for space in the 30-year history of the Complete Directory, and that is a testament to the vision of two men who still take great pride in handcrafting American TV's greatest single reference guide, online or offline.

Transcript: Vicente Fox v. Telemundo's Ruben Luengas

If you're arriving here by search engine, the following is an English translation of a piece appearing on the La Jornada website. I had it translated to supplement this commentary about Jon Stewart's recent interview of Fox.

Ex-president Vicente Fox yesterday exploded during an interview [literally he “thundered the interview”] with a journalist from Channel 52 of the Telemundo network, when the interviewer inquired about the properties of Marta Sahagun, and in particular about the La Estancia ranch, located in the state of Guanajuato.

Vicente Fox on "The Daily Show": Something lost in translation

First, let's get over the fantasy that "The Daily Show" is not a news program. The nation's TV critics gave it a TCA award for news in 2004, and our decision was controversial then (Andy Heyward, then the head of CBS news, stormed out of the ceremony declaring, "You'll never see us pawning off fake news on the American public!" -- OK, I made up that quote, but he was PO'd at the TCA). But no one would care now. Not with Pew polls finding that more young Americans consider Jon Stewart their Charlie Gibson. Not when Frank Rich borrows Op-Ed ideas from Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Second impressions of the new shows

(Above: The gorgeous women keep throwing themselves at Chuck. And he keeps saying no! Click the pic for a two-minute recap of last week's ep.)

This was one of those fall premiere seasons when no new network show leaped off the screen. No “Lost.” No “24.” Not even a “Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer.” It happens. And when it happens, I've learned to hedge my bets.

  Since mid-July I've been telling you that while some TV pilots impressed me, I wanted to see the second episodes of these new fall shows before passing final judgment. I've now had that opportunity. The viewers have also had a chance to weigh in.

Audience relations: Bill Maher v. Rush Limbaugh

Reading yesterday's New York Times story on Jerry Seinfeld made me aware of how much practice it takes to be a comedian, to be likable and at the same time be true to yourself — which in the case of a lot of comedians means being self-centered and angry a lot of the time.

Seinfeld and Larry David are masters at this balancing act, but I can't recall anyone who's had to pull it off on live TV at a moment's notice. That's just what happened to Bill Maher during the Friday night telecast of his HBO talk show when certain audience members rose up to sabotage his show.

Before we look at that video, however, let's enjoy a classic moment from 1990. It's late at night in the very same building "Real Time" is now taped — CBS Television City — and Rush Limbaugh is hosting "The Midnight Hour," the show that was "The Pat Sajak Show" until Pat started getting lower ratings than Arsenio Hall. As you'll see, members of the audience begin to act up (indeed, the stunt was organized by ACT UP), and unless your name is Rush Limbaugh, the rest is nothing short of great television. (If it doesn't load, try this.):

"Damages" and "Phenomenon"

On WBAL today, Shari Elliker and I talked about the ratings challenges facing FX's latest challenging new drama. And we yakked about NBC's latest nutty reality scheme, "Phenomenon," aka "Last Mentalist Standing."

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Rise and shine, Kris Ketz

(Above: KMBC-9's very first "FirstNews," from 1988, wasn't much of a high-stakes affair. KMBC-9 will be joining other Hearst-Argyle stations with its own YouTube space. Official launch, I'm told, is Wednesday.)

Last night, if all went according to plan, Kris Ketz and his 2-year-old went to bed at the same time. That way, one of them could wake up at 2:30 a.m. for his first day as KMBC-9 morning news anchor.

Email of the week

We waited until the 11th hour to declare a winner of this week's competition, but our patience was rewarded as two wonderfully weird letters arrived this afternoon.

The "Jack" ad you never saw

Well, at least I never saw it before. While en route to looking up other things (as Sydney J. Harris used to say), I found this rare 60-second "Cops" spoof commercial for burger chain Jack in the Box.  Those stores aren't in our area (heck, we just got our first Chick-Fil-A's), which probably explains why I didn't see it.  Only the 30's are run on network TV. It's a hoot.

"Damages": When good shows get bad ratings

(Above: A 10-minute catcher-upper on the season of "Damages." For a slightly less frenetic version, a 12-hour marathon begins at 7 a.m. CT Saturday on FX.)

Two years ago, FX took a huge gamble by staging a war drama set in present-day Iraq. “Over There” depicted combat at its most depersonalized and nihilistic, with storylines ripped from the real Mess O' Potamia. Steven Bochco, the “NYPD Blue” producer, wanted to put a war most Americans seemed eager to forget back into their living rooms as fictional fact.

"Mad Men" or "Viva Laughlin": The non-tough call of the day

When it comes to adapting British TV shows for American tastes, there seems to be no middle ground. Either the de-Anglified version is brilliant (“Sanford & Son,” “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” “The Office”) or it stinks (“The Weakest Link,” “Coupling”).

  I'm not quite ready to drag “Viva Laughlin,” CBS's attempt to replicate the Brit hit “Blackpool,” into the “stinks” category. But that's only because I'm extending it the same courtesy as every other new show this fall: I'm withholding judgment until I can see a second episode -- in this case, out of the perhaps naïve belief that America's top-rated network did not just suck the life out of a quirky, Peabody Award-winning sensation.

  But if you have to choose tonight, do not stop on CBS. Instead, go directly to AMC and watch the season finale of “Mad Men,” also at 9 p.m. CT.  Not only is it a far better TV series, tonight's episode is commercial free.